Midtown Lunch

One of the most hotly anticipated food truck launches in recent memory happened yesterday, with Taim Mobile rolling out its un-shiny new wheels. They parked on Hudson St. on the western edge of Soho, away from the heavy foot traffic a couple of blocks away in either direction (probably on purpose), but still drew a long line despite the rainy conditions. My wait time from ordering to food in hand was about 30 minutes, but I blame that on the sheer number of orders because they actually seemed to have a good system going and plenty of people working in the truck. And man, was the wait worth it.

I haven’t actually eaten at the brick and mortar location of Taim in the West Village, but have heard nothing but good things about their falafel. To say I was excited that they chose to park downtown instead of midtown may be an understatement.

They offer two sandwiches and platters plus a bunch of add ins for an extra cost. You can also get a daily soup, fries and pickles among some other sides. Smoothies and cold drinks also seem to be popular (after all, they’re a falafel and smoothie truck!) but I’ll save that for another trip.

I placed my order for the falafel sandwich ($5.75) with s’rug and an order of fries ($3) that come with saffron aioli. Then I waited about 15 minutes with a bunch of other lunch’ers trying to amuse themselves as the line grew.

There were a lot of things I liked about this sandwich, but the top two were that they didn’t drown it in tahini like they do at most carts or trucks and the falafel were interspersed throughout the whole sandwich instead of just being shoved into the top or bottom.

I’m still having fantasies about how I could actually taste the falafel and it didn’t just taste like oil! The Israeli salad was not a mushy mess and they didn’t skimp on the hummus either. Pretty much everything was top notch in my book, and I don’t think it’s because my brain was clouded by extreme hunger.

The fries were just OK. They were hot, greasy and salty, but I could have used a little more crispness to them. Maybe this is just how their fries are? Since it was basically their first day of dealing with a mob of hungry office workers I’m going to let it slide.

It sounds like they are still working on their schedule but the guy in front of me  was told the truck will try to get to Soho once a week. Sadly, I got a response of “maybe – it’s possible” when I asked if they were going to come down to the Financial District.

Taim Mobile, on the Web and Twitter